For Sale: Your Cellphone Data?

5/21/2013 7:36PM

Big phone companies have begun selling the vast troves of data they gather about their subscribers' location, travels and interests -- opening up a long-anticipated and powerful tool for marketers but raising new concerns about privacy, Anton Troianovski reports on digits. Photo: Getty Images.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

... I ... the ... wireless carrier see a new source of profits your day ... I'm and time friend asking at the Wall Street Journal ... the smartphone is an incredibly powerful market research tool ... it follows you everywhere you go ... and it has a wealth of information about your networks and your interests ... the phone companies collect all this data as part of making the network run ... but they've been slow to try to make money off of it in part because of privacy concerns ... now that's starting to change ... Verizon Wireless has a program called the station market insights ... that sells the ... data about groups of users to marketing for us ... for example the Phoenix Suns use the Verizon programmed to learn about where their fans are coming from and how likely they are to visit the sponsor of the day after the game ... wireless carriers in Europe have also launched similar programs recently ... all these carriers say ... that they are selling data about groups of users nothing that can be used to identify due individually ... but privacy advocates still have some concerns ... for example ... opening this new line of business for carriers ... could prompt them to collect even more data ... and store more and more than they need to run their networks ... wireless carriers say their biggest priority is your privacy ... but they also have to worry about what their shareholders ... and the cellphone market is getting saturated meaning that carriers are looking for new sources of revenue ... that's why ... you can expect that even though it'll still be paying your cellphone bill ... your data will also mean someone else's